


Vows

by gwinne



Category: The X-Files
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-27
Updated: 2018-06-27
Packaged: 2019-05-29 10:58:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,589
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15071756
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gwinne/pseuds/gwinne
Summary: Post-episode for "Existence"





	Vows

VOWS

"She needs to get to the hospital."

Despite the seriousness of her statement, there was little   
threat in Agent Reyes' voice, at least to Mulder. But the   
moment he crossed the threshold and saw his partner, he   
panicked.

He knew birth was messy. That much he'd gleaned from the few   
prepared childbirth classes he and Scully actually made it to.   
And he knew birth was painful; he was sure he'd never forget the   
sounds of laboring women on the videos, so raw, so primal.   
Still, he wasn't prepared to see Scully propped up in an old   
brass bed, hair stuck to her face in sweaty clumps, tears   
running into the open neck of her shirt. She clutched the baby,   
wrapped in a blood-streaked towel, to her chest. He couldn't   
hear the child over Scully's sobs. Oh God.

"Scully?" He walked toward her slowly, cataloguing the bloody   
towels piled at the foot of the bed and the butcher knife that   
Reyes must have used to cut the cord.

She looked up at him then, mouth pulled down in that anguished   
way he hadn't seen since Donnie Pfaster first attacked her. Her   
face was blotchy from the exertion of the birth and her breath   
hitched. Even in the most intimate moments of their   
relationship, flushed and relaxed in orgasm, she had never   
seemed so vulnerable. "Scully," he started again, "is it, is   
everything--"

Sudden movement caught his attention, the baby's hand flailing   
in open air. She's nursing, Mulder realized, that's why it's   
not making any noise.

She nodded slightly and looked back down at the infant. Mulder   
sat on the bed, bracketed between Scully's bent knees and the   
headboard, running his index finger lightly over the baby's   
scalp. Despite the layer of vernix and gore that covered its   
body, there was no question of who this child's mother was.   
Strawberry blond fuzz curled under Mulder's hand as he palmed   
the baby's pointed head. And above the mouth, wet with   
colostrum, sat a nose that could have only come from him. For   
the first time since Lizzy Gill set this nightmare in motion,   
Mulder felt his jaw clench and stay released.

Pressed against him, Scully shivered and gasped, her thighs   
quivering from exhaustion. When he reached up, tracing her   
cheekbone with his knuckles, she shut her eyes. He wondered if   
she would ever look at him the same way again. 

"It's a boy," Agent Reyes said as she washed her hands. He   
hadn't even heard her come in. "They're okay. But I think we   
should get them to a hospital. I've never done this before,"   
she paused, glancing quickly in the direction of Scully's legs,   
"but I don't think she should be bleeding this much." A hint of   
urgency surfaced above the practiced calm of Reyes' tone.   
Scully would know, he told himself, she'd say something if we   
should be concerned.

"Mulder," Scully finally said, her voice low and worn from what   
Mulder could only imagine as hours of screaming. In that single   
word, his own name, he heard her every fear and the beginnings   
of relief. 

He rested his forehead against hers until they were almost nose   
to nose, the baby mewing softly between them. "It will be   
okay," he said. "I promise."

* * *

"I want to go home, Mulder." It was the first full sentence   
she'd uttered to him since they admitted her to the ER. Before   
he could answer, her gaze drifted lower, to the small boy asleep   
in her arms.

"You just gave birth, Scully."

"Plenty of women give birth without ever setting foot in a   
hospital. I'll be fine, Mulder, you heard the doctor." Her   
voice still crackled from overuse, but at least she was talking   
to him again.

"Yeah, he said he was amazed everything went as smoothly as it   
did, given the abruption and all."

Seconds after they arrived at the hospital, mother and son had   
been separated for the second time that day. While the   
pediatrician poked and prodded, giving the baby a near-perfect   
"9" on the Apgar scale, the head of obstetrics palpated Scully's   
abdomen, delivered the placenta, and stitched up what he   
described as "an amazingly minor laceration for an unattended   
birth." Even now, with Scully cleaned up and resting, Mulder's   
heart still raced. He wasn't ready. In the week's adrenaline   
rush to protect her, he'd lost sight of what this moment meant   
for him. For them. She'd never said it. In all these weeks,   
with him shuttling from apartment to apartment, accompanying her   
to birthing classes, and assembling a bassinet in the corner of   
her room, she'd never actually said that she wanted him to be   
this baby's father.

"I'm so tired, Mulder," Scully said, her voice wavering with the   
now-familiar onset of tears. He'd seen her cry more in the few   
months since his return than he had in the seven years prior.   
The baby fussed a little and Scully cupped his tiny fist inside   
her own. "Let's go home."

When he'd agreed to be her birth partner, he'd agreed to do   
things her way. Part of him knew that it was all a fantasy--the   
quiet labor, the water birth in a homey suite--and that the real   
thing would be dangerous and out of her control. Aliens had   
witnessed the birth of this child; the man who came to kill   
Scully and take her son had stood and watched as she screamed   
and pushed and cried.

If she wanted to go home, they would go home. "Let me make some   
calls. I'll get us a plane."

* * *

Mulder wasn't sure what to expect as he opened the door to her   
apartment. It had been nearly twenty-four hours since he'd left   
Scully and her unnamed son in the care of proud Grandma Maggie,   
already in the kitchen slicing carrots and onions for chicken   
soup.

"You need some time alone," he'd explained, watching Scully   
settle herself carefully on the couch. How ordinary it all   
seemed, a mother preparing to feed her child, after the surreal   
spectacle of his birth. He sat on the edge of the coffee table,   
tapping her gently on the knee.

Her hand froze on the top button of her pajamas. "But you're--"

"I need to check in with Skinner. There was a situation," he   
paused slightly to let her heft the full weight of the word,   
"down at the bureau. Besides, aren't I supposed to pass out   
cigars or something?" He shrugged, pressing his hands against   
his thighs. They suddenly seemed huge, almost the length of the   
baby's torso. 

She forced a smile, and something in his stomach turned. Mulder   
thought of the baby, how only yesterday he shifted and kicked in   
the warmth of his mother's womb. It hadn't seemed real until   
now. 

And, for a man who had yet to hold his son, it was all too real,   
the baby's lusty cry and the milky smell of his mother's skin.   
His throat constricted. As Mulder stood and moved toward the   
door, he paused at her side. He squeezed her shoulder, running   
his thumb back and forth over the silken material at her   
collarbone. He needed to reassure himself as much as her.   
"And when I come back, Scully, that kid better have a name."

Now, closing the door and pocketing his key, Mulder took in   
lingering aroma of garlic and spices from Maggie's cooking. The   
apartment was quiet, quieter than he expected. No   
overprotective grandmother giving orders to the anxious new   
mother, no baby crying for a diaper change. Only the balloons   
floating in the corner of the room and the padded carrier on the   
kitchen table indicated that a new baby lived here. He'd   
wrapped it in Flintstones paper for her to open at the shower,   
"for when we get out of the car" written on the card.

He certainly wasn't expecting to see the guys, stammering in   
embarrassment at being caught in Scully's bedroom. Somehow,   
though, it all made sense, this odd group of five he considered   
family. This is it, Mulder thought as the Gunmen headed for the   
front door, it all begins now. He unclenched his fists and   
walked toward her, seated on the edge of her impeccably made bed   
with the baby in the crook of her arm. It didn't seem possible   
that she was the same person who, less than two days ago, lay   
sobbing on a bed of sweat and slime. In her pale satin pajamas   
and robe, she looked almost ethereal.

What did he say to her, the woman whose child he'd agreed to   
father, the woman he'd left to give birth in the company of an   
untrained midwife and a roomful of aliens while he chased the   
bad guys around D.C.? It should have been him, not Reyes, who   
helped her bring this child into the world. She could have bled   
to death, he thought, not for the first time, remembering the   
obstetrician's dour-faced warning. And he wouldn't have even   
been there to hold her. 

"How's everybody doing?" he finally said, asking the standard   
question that would earn the standard reply.

"We're doing just fine." As she stood and walked toward him,   
only the slightest waver of discomfort in her step, he knew that   
for once she was telling the truth.

* * *

"So what do we do now?" Mulder asked, when their kiss finally   
broke.

"I need to lie down," Scully said. She leaned heavily against   
his chest, right over her son's restless feet. 

"Everything okay?"

"I'm just achy. And tired." Her words were punctuated by   
William's coo. She exhaled deeply, pulling away. "I haven't   
been this tired since Antarctica."

Mulder shifted the baby more firmly into his right arm, reaching   
up to stroke her face with his other hand. "Why don't you take   
a nap for a bit and Willie and I will get acquainted." 

Her eyebrow raised, objecting as quickly as she did to his   
theories about vampires and exsanguinated cows. She crossed her   
arms tightly over her chest, as if she'd forgotten what she did   
with them before William's birth.

"Will? Billy? Bill?" Scully made a show of clearing her   
throat and moved back toward the bed. "Okay, then, 'William' it   
is. Does he have a middle name?"

She paused, pressing her hand into the mattress. "I thought I'd   
leave that up to his father, if that's okay with you." 

"Seriously?" He looked up from the baby, almost asleep in the   
cradle of his arms. No wonder she didn't want to let go of him.   
Scully nodded, shrugging out of her bathrobe and laying it over   
the footboard.

"I suppose 'Elvis' is out of the question?" As he spoke, he   
walked the baby back to the bassinet, rocking William slightly   
in his arms. So much for getting acquainted.

"Why don't we stick with names that won't get him beaten up on   
the playground." Scully piled throw pillows on the floor, and   
Mulder wanted to ask if this was always her nightly routine, if   
he and the baby had changed it.

"Sure. Okay. Say goodnight to Mommy, William." The newborn's   
eyes fluttered and shut, and Mulder placed the boy in his bed.   
He wound the mobile, a gift from Skinner, and 'Twinkle Twinkle   
Little Star' filled the room. Across from him, Scully pulled   
back the comforter and climbed into bed.

The evening before the baby shower, Mulder had shown up at her   
door with a box of bedding instead of the usual pizza. As he   
tightened bolts and smoothed sheets lined with clouds, Scully   
told him about that awful night before they found him dead in   
the woods. She told him how, at the funeral, Skinner had said   
he was sure Mulder was watching over them from the stars,   
protecting them. "He's been so good to me, Mulder. I think   
this is his way of saying he's sorry. And saying he believes."

I'm here now, he'd wanted to say, but it seemed too simple.   
"I'd like to believe, too, Scully, that this baby will be born   
into starlight. That whoever or whatever is up there will watch   
over him, keep him safe."

Tonight, listening to the soft sucking sounds William made in   
his sleep, Mulder vowed to protect him from someplace much   
closer than the stars. He closed his eyes, feeling the baby's   
steady heartbeat beneath his palm, then spooned up behind Scully   
on the bed.

"Seriously, Mulder, how did you find us?"

He settled his hand against the gentle swell of her belly. For   
a moment, he expected to feel the welcome nighttime movements of   
their son. She stiffened a bit at his touch, and he didn't know   
whether he had hurt her, or if she missed the sensation as well.

"The pilot had a map, Scully. But there really was a light.   
It's from an observatory on Brasstown Bald, the highest mountain   
in Georgia."

"It does make a better story, you know, for when he grows up."

"Once upon a time, there was a beautiful scientist and a geeky   
prince."

"Spooky. And why do you get to be a prince?" She reached back   
and stroked his hip.

"Shhh. Let me finish. One day the beautiful scientist came to   
rescue the prince from the evil dungeon."

"You love that basement."

"Scully!" He pulled her back more tightly against the curve of   
his body and kissed the exposed skin where shoulder met neck.   
"Long story short: the prince fell madly in love with the   
beautiful scientist but it took him eight long years and a   
miraculous conception to get up the courage to tell her."

"That's no way to end a story, Mulder. What happens to them?   
Do they live happily ever after?" Beneath Scully's questions,   
Mulder heard the baby fussing again.

"I hope so," he said, getting up for what would inevitably be   
the first of many times that night. "Hey, buddy, what's the   
problem?" William's face reddened and scrunched before he began   
to wail. Mulder bent his knees, bouncing the little boy as he   
walked back toward Scully, on the other side of the bed.

"Let me take him, Mulder. He needs to eat." He envied how   
quickly she had learned to identify what he needed from the   
sound of his cry. After she unbuttoned her pajama top with   
well-practiced fingers, Mulder set the child squirming in her   
arms. He watched, transfixed, as the boy latched on to his   
mother's nipple, covering the entire aureole with his small   
mouth.

"Wow." He sat facing her, hip to hip.

"Wow?"

"I just never pictured this. Somehow, I always envisioned you   
as the plastic bottle type of mom. But this, I mean, wow,   
Scully, it's amazing." He skimmed his finger over the baby's   
cheek and the alabaster skin of his mother's breast. He rested   
his forehead against hers, just as he had in those first moments   
after William's birth. "I'm so sorry, Scully."

"For what?" Mulder felt, as well as saw, the movement as she   
bit the inside of her cheek.

"For everything that happened. For everything that could have   
happened. To you. To him. I'm sorry I wasn't there."

She swallowed audibly. "Next time." In those two soft words,   
Mulder heard the strength of her vow. It had taken eight years,   
two abductions, a bout with cancer, and his own ill-timed death,   
but they were finally ready to be a family.

"I'll be there from the first dizzy spell to the last push." He   
kissed her then, sure that this moment was as close to a wedding   
ceremony as they'd ever get. "I promise."


End file.
